The present invention relates to a home laundry drier.
More specifically, the present invention relates to a home laundry drier of the type comprising a substantially parallelepiped-shaped casing; a cylindrical laundry drying tub fixed horizontally inside the casing, directly facing a laundry loading/unloading opening formed in the front face of the casing; and a door hinged to the front face of the casing to rotate to and from a work position closing the opening in the front face and sealing the cylindrical tub.
As is known, driers have a drying circuit connected to the drying tub; and a hot-air generator which generates and circulates the same air continually inside the drying tub, so as to continuously extract surplus moisture from the hot air issuing from the drying tub after flowing over the laundry inside the tub.
The hot-air generator comprises a condenser module for extracting moisture from the drying air; and a number of independent filters for filtering fibres and/or fluff released into the air by the laundry inside the drying tub, to prevent clogging of the component parts of the hot-air generator.
More specifically, some driers of the above type have two independent filters: a first fitted to the inlet of a first portion of the drying circuit, formed on the door and facing the loading/unloading opening of the tub; and a second normally fitted to a slit, which is formed in a peripheral edge of the loading/unloading opening, is positioned facing the outlet of the first portion, and defines the inlet of a second portion of the drying circuit adjacent to the first portion.
As is known, each filter comprises a mesh sized to trap fluff/fibres, while allowing sufficient minimum airflow for the drying circuit to operate.
In driers of the above type, the maximum size of the filters depends on the filter-seating spaces in the drier.
More specifically, the first filter must be sized for assembly to the door, so its maximum size must be smaller than the size of the door; while the size of the second filter depends on the size of the slit to which it is fitted. This restriction, together with that of ensuring minimum airflow, poses a limit to the extent to which the mesh size can be reduced. As a result, the openings in the mesh only provide for partly filtering, i.e. relatively large-size, fluff/fibres, whereas smaller fluff/fibres pass freely through the filter and deposit on the condenser module.
To eliminate the above drawback, driers of the above type feature a condenser module that can be extracted from the casing to allow the user to periodically clean off deposited fluff/fibres.
This solution, however, is complicated in design and expensive to produce, on account of the pull-out condenser module requiring an extra door hinged to the casing, and electronic safety devices for indicating opening/closing of the door, with all the drawbacks this entails in terms of manufacture and higher production cost of the drier.
Other driers are known to employ a third filter located along the drying circuit and directly facing the condenser module to intercept airflow into the module. More specifically, the condenser module is housed stably inside a respective seat inside the casing, normally beneath the drying tub; and the third filter is housed in a drawer, also located beneath the drying tub, and which can be pulled out of the casing to allow the user to clean the filter.
This solution has the drawback of the additional third filter bringing about a far from negligible increase in the manufacturing cost of the drier.